Cantona Moves Knight To p4

Last week, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer played what was described later in the press as ‘the final of finals’. It was breathtaking game, seesawing back and forth 6-4, 6-4, 7-6, 7-6, 9-7 until Nadal finally won. I slept through it. Skimmed the back pages the next day, ran my eye over the score, raised an eyebrow and turned the page. Tennis bores me. It’s not the sport as such but the players. The last time I remember watching tennis was when Gustavo ‘Guga’ Kuerten won the French Open. Before that, Ivanisevic’s unforgettable run at Wimbledon. In the late eighties through to the early nineties I used to watch tennis till my eyes glued shut. Who can forget Becker winning Wimbledon at 17? Or the epic Edberg/Becker/Lendl clashes of that era. The rot set in, I think, with the drab, soulless robot Jim Courier. The tennis was great. Great athlete and everything. But where’s the charisma?

"Collar turned up, back straight, chest stuck out, he glided into the arena as if he owned the fucking place. Any arena, but nowhere more effectively than Old Trafford. This was his stage. He loved it, the crowd loved him" (Roy Keane, Cantona's successor as Manchester United captain.)

Charisma, according to one definition, is described as ‘the ability to influence without reason’. That is why people were so engrossed in Mourinho’s boring-boring Chelsea past two seasons. Why people watch Clint Eastwood’s braindead westerns. I’d rather watch Eric Cantona playing chess than Peter Crouch playing in a scintillating 4-3 comeback in a Champions League final. That is the malaise that’s gripped the sport of tennis now. Who the hell wants to pay money to see that annoying pumped-up freak Nadal execute a technically perfect cross-court volley? We didn’t come here for the science of the game. We came to be entertained. Not to be bored into submission by some overhyped mindrot. While on the subject, is there anything more overrated and overhyped than the Olympics? Would you want to watch Men’s 200 metres breaststroke on pay-per-view? Equestrian? Wrestling? Protestors are crying for the Olympics to be banned for a variety of reasons. From human rights atrocities to 28 inch chicken breasts. I’m with them. The Olympics is dead boring. Ban the fucking thing. It’s a human rights violation if there ever was one.